A wealthy Philadelphia couple, Dorothy and Sean Turner, experience a fracture in their marriage after the death of their thirteen-week-old son, Jericho.

The couple undergo transitory object therapy using a lifelike reborn doll after Dorothy experiences a full psychotic break.

Six weeks after his death, they hire a young nanny, Leanne Grayson, to move in and take care of Jericho, the reborn doll, opening their home to increasingly unusual occurrences.

She then discreetly checks the mothers' backs for scars while they are in downward dog, finding one peeking out of the tank top of one of the mommies.

The mother claims she was not snooping and the baby dropped the pacifier, and pulls one out of her pocket in a maneuver to make it appear she picked it off the ground.

At a block party for feeding the homeless, Dorothy ignore Julian's warnings about the cult probably watching and takes baby Jericho for his television debut to undermine her friend Isabelle for replacing her as Channel 8 reporter.

She overhears Isabelle and the black-haired mother of baby Matthew from the mommy-and-me group talking about the ambulance that came for Jericho's demise the previous summer.

Julian, however, reminds Sean that the last time he had left to be on that show had cost them Jericho; that accepting would unmistakably wake Dorothy up from her "sleeping beauty" routine.

Leanne tells Sean that the homeless people she has visited appear to almost worship her to the point of wanting to learn from her rebellious nature for being able defect from the Church of Lesser Saints cult.

Isabelle later calls an ambulance on a homeless man she claimed was sleeping nearby, and Leanne spots her speaking to a paramedic and pointing at the Turner home.

Leanne prepares the house to welcome a paraplegic Dorothy when one of the Church of Lesser Saints cult members attack her by spraying her eyes with holy water.

One of them, Roberta, is a spiritual medium who conducts a séance to help Dorothy finally heal by beginning to accept what has happened to her and move forward.

Leanne presents the dagger that she procured in the third season and attacks Bobbie under the assumption she is hiding scars as proof of flogging by the Church.

Sean and Julian are thoroughly stumped by these revelations as they contradict all of their suspicions of Leanne being a supernatural being whom they earlier referred to as a reborn "fallen angel" as a byproduct of the Faustian Bargain tale.

Finding the window wide open during such a heavy rainstorm, she comes to close it and is unnerved to see Leanne so calm and meditating.

However, Leanne turns the tables on her uncle by running him through with the fiery dagger and leaves George and the others to burn in hell by completing the ritual herself.

She assures Leanne that she is not evil, as she had given her months with Jericho when she would have done anything to have her son if only for just one moment and that was more than enough as she had to live with the pain of losing him as part of her deep love for him.

Leanne, however, contradicts her, saying how as a girl, she had hid in her room with the fear that she would be punished for the fire that had killed her parents thirteen years ago.

Inside the house, Leanne had started a fire by dousing the rooms in gasoline and throws down a lit match and calmly watches the reborn doll burn to ash.

Not wanting to wait any longer, Julian is shocked to find the entire house afire and notices Leanne's shoes outside as she jumps into the flames.

A set for the interior of the Turner home was built in a former paint factory in Bethel Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

[28] For the first season, the review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 84% approval rating with an average score of 7.2/10, based on 61 reviews.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Though Servant's slithering mystery often wanders into dark, crowded corners, its claustrophobic atmosphere and powerful performances build enough tension to keep viewers hooked.

[34] For the fourth and final season, Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% approval rating with an average score of 7.9/10, based on 19 reviews.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Servant's devotion to gothic absurdity pays off handsomely in a confident final season, with this singular series ending on a note of characteristically wry disquiet.

[36] Author Stephen King has praised the series on multiple occasions, calling it "spooky as hell", "extremely creepy and totally involving.

"[37][38] Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has called it a beautifully crafted, elegant show which feels like a European slow burn.

[39] In January 2020, Francesca Gregorini filed a lawsuit against the show's producers including Tony Basgallop and M. Night Shyamalan, the production companies involved, and Apple TV+, alleging copyright infringement for her 2013 drama film, The Truth About Emanuel.

The Truth About Emanuel is a psychological thriller in which a woman uses a lifelike doll to cope with the loss of her infant, hiring a young girl as a nanny to take care of it.

[53] In February 2022, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined that the lawsuit was dismissed prematurely, as the discovery steps had not actually been carried out, ruling "'reasonable minds could differ' on whether the stories are substantially similar.